There are four new memorials coming to D.C. with a unique twist — you get to have a say in their final look.
“They are not your traditional man on a horse that we see in a circle, right, but they can represent something different,” said Anita Cozart, director of D.C.’s Office of Planning.
The four new memorials are coming to Wards 4, 5, 7 and 8.
She said these are areas with few to no memorials and, these displays will look a little different.
“When you think about the District as a place of monuments and memorials, a lot of those are centered in our downtown, and not in all the neighborhoods around the city,” she said.
The goal is to increase commemoration of historic Black Washingtonians and other leaders of color.
“That helps us to advance our goals around racial equity around inclusion, belonging and neighborhoods, and just being able to have a history that people feel invested in and wanted to continue to be stewards of,” she said.
The memorials have gone through preliminary approvals and are now narrowed down to two different designs each.
You can find them all online and vote for your favorite designs for each memorial, as well as leave comments about your thoughts on them.
“We target our efforts in places where there are not a lot of those commemorative works,” she said. “And we focus on populations that don’t necessarily get memorialized.”
The next step for the memorials is approval of the final designs this fall followed by a period of fundraising.
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